Been on a bit of a “staycation” this week: this Friday is a state holiday here in California (1), so I’ve taken today and tomorrow off to turn it into a five-day weekend. Ah, the life of the One Percent.

As you can imagine, the urge to post frothing right-wing rants has been low.

I’ll have something good for y’all tomorrow, I promise, but, for now, here’s satirist Andrew Klavan to explain to us the wonders and mysteries of Leftist Magical Thinking:

Trouble is, the magic often turns out to be a curse.

Footnote:
(1) In honor of Cesar Chavez, who fought for a farm workers union and was a strong opponent of illegal immigration.

Writer and satirist Andrew Klavan takes a sober, dignified look at the recent report on torture and the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques from the Senate Intelligence Committee. I think he sums it up just about right:

Notice how quiet the Democrats and the MSM have become about that report? That’s because they realize it was such an embarrassingly bad hack job that even they can’t defend it.

(In light of recent events in France, I thought this appropriate to re-post. )

Andrew Klavan brings us another in his series of public-service educational videos, this time to let us know how we should behave when Muslims go nuts over a perceived slight and kill a bunch of people — how do we stop it and keep it from happening again?

The answer is simple, my friends: we give up our principles. Enjoy the lesson.

Writing at PJMedia, Andrew Klavan considers the Left’s desperation to use race as political tool –pushing narratives that turn out not to be true; then making up racialist fables that don’t need facts, they’re just true, you racist; and, when those fail, causing problems to prove there is a problem that needs their cure– and wonders why they do this. What purpose does it serve?

Not one to leave us hanging, Andrew also gives us the answer: the quest for power.

The trouble that besets us is not white against black, and it’s not black against white either. It’s the left against liberty.

Leftism — by which I mean the end of liberty through forced “equality” — by which I mean the absolute power of a ruling class over the unwashed many — by which I mean tyranny — by which I mean leftism — uses race as a ploy, uses the poor as pawns, uses violence as a means, but has only one purpose: power; the power of the elite few. As valid excuses to exercise that power (slavery and segregation) fall away, it creates false excuses (Duke, Trayvon, Ferguson). When the false excuses are exposed, it creates make-believe injustices (white privilege, micro-aggression). When the make-believe is laughed off, it seizes the next moment of high tension to spew lies, gin up emotion, and engineer violence. Then, in the aftermath of the wholly unnecessary turmoil, rage and destruction, we’re all supposed to wearily agree: ”Something must be done.”

The only thing that needs to be done is to boot the leftists out of power and off TV.

I’m down with that.

Whether it’s progressivism, with its rule by technocrats and boards of experts, or out and out Alinskyism, which deliberately sets one group against another (“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”), or bare-naked Bolshevism, the Left beyond a mild social liberalism is all about the taking and holding of power. Conservatives and libertarians want government to perform a few tasks, the kind of jobs it’s best suited to (make war, attend to infrastructure, run the courts, &c) and otherwise leave people to look after their own affairs. Government power should be dispersed and as local as practical. The Left, on the the other hand, wants government to do everything and for themselves to be in charge so they can run everyone else’s affairs for them. And the more centralized the authority, the better.

The Right wants to empower people. The Left wants to empower itself, in the name of The People.

PS: I realize Lefties of good faith might well object to this, being motivated by a genuine, albeit misguided, desire to build a better world. Take it from me: Your “leaders” are using you.

RELATED: An essay from Roger L. Simon you should read. Here’s an excerpt:

The Democrats have been reduced to the party of the rich elite (George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Jonathan Gruber-types, edit al.) and the party of the poor exploited by those elites — a lethal combination that takes society exactly nowhere. In essence, they are the party of racism and sexism — that’s about it. Oh, and climate change. There’s a winner for you.

In today’s episode of The Revolting Truth, Andrew treats us to some counter-revisionist history, to correct the Democrats’… “fanciful narrative” about their role in the Iraq war:

For the record, I doubt I’ll ever forgive Senator Harry Ried (D-Snake In The Grass) for proclaiming to the world that the war was lost, just as American forces are entering the field for a crucial battle.

Oh, brother. If we needed any more convincing that it was well-past time for Senator Jay Rockfeller (D-WV) to retire and never be heard from again, this clip of him not just playing the race card, but slamming it on the table and dancing around it should do the trick:

Apparently the senator’s “analysis” was aimed at Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), who was at the hearing. Naturally, Johnson took offense:

“My opposition to health care has nothing to do with the race of President Obama,” Johnson said. “I objected to this because it’s an assault on our freedom. … I found it very offensive that you would basically imply that I’m a racist because I oppose this health care law.”

“You’re evidently satisfied with a lot of people not having health insurance,” Rockefeller responded.

“I am not. Quit making those assumptions. Quit saying I’m satisfied with that. I’m not. There’s another way of doing this,” Johnson said. “Please, don’t assume, don’t make implications of what I’m thinking and what I would really support. You have no idea.”

“I actually do,” Rockefeller said. “God help you.”

“No senator, God help you for implying I’m a racist,” Johnson replied.

But the senator from West Virginia didn’t just slam his colleague from Wisconsin; he cavalierly insulted all of us who oppose the Affordable Care Act. While I can’t speak for others, let me recapitulate the reasons I oppose it:

Political Philosophy: By placing the State in charge of people’s healthcare, you fundamentally alter the relationship between citizen and State, turning free people into dependent wards of a Leviathan-like government and taking away their control over a crucial part of their own lives. To a conservative/classical liberal like me, this is a bad thing.

Constitutionalism: Congress has no authority –none!– to force a citizen to buy a private product under penalty of law. This is an abominable legislative usurpation and a trammeling of individual liberty. It tortures the Commerce Clause until it begs for mercy. It goes against the spirit and intent of our founding documents, and the Supreme Court, in the worst decision since Korematsu, was wrong to uphold the law.

Bad Law: I’ll be more charitable than Senator Rockefeller and stipulate that most voting for this law thought they were doing good and helping people. But that doesn’t justify defending a law that just isn’t working. It’s not even meeting its basic goals: healthcare premiums are still skyrocketing; millions have lost the insurance they liked; millions have lost access to the doctors they liked; and, even when you have insurance, you may not be able to find a physician who will take you. (Really. Watch that one.) When a law performs as poorly as this, is it any wonder people hate it? Are they all racists, Jay?

Somehow, looking over those reasons, I think it’s safe to say the President’s ancestry doesn’t matter to me and my opposition to his miserable law. In fact, I can quite honestly say I couldn’t give a rat’s rear end about President Obama’s race.

But I don’t expect you to get that, Senator.

PS: On a lighter note, I’m happy to say Andrew Klavan is back at last making satirical political videos. Longtime readers will recall my love for his “Klavan on the Culture” series. Now he’s returned, producing them for Truth Revolt. (He also still works with PJMedia and PJTV) In this video, he explains what we’ve all wondered: Just why do Democrats call us racist? Enjoy.